6 ms·
Those are hilariously small numbers. The accounting departments of those companies probably wouldn't even blink if one extra zero were added to the end. If yo
by seiji 11y ago
Those are hilariously small numbers. The accounting departments of those companies probably wouldn't even blink if one extra zero were added to the end.
If you're funding open source products like this, companies should fund at least 3-5 full time senior engineer salaries per year. We should praise "donating" $3 million to $10 million per year. Anything less is a joke seeing these amounts are from multi-billion dollar companies built on free software.
Imagine you lived next to a free buffet that only accepted donations. You ate there every day of the year, saved thousands of dollars over buying and making your own food, then thought you were being "generous" by dropping them a tenner at Christmas. Also, you're a full time tech employee who cashed out millions in stock and have several million dollar apartments in cities around the world. But, sure, you're generous by dropping them $10.
- cmurf 11y agoWhile I agree this is pocket change, at least these companies are putting in something. And Microsoft has become a top Linux kernel contributor, and Google, Facebook do hire full time programmers that work on Linux as well (and possibly BSD). My question is, where's Apple?
- tyho 11y agoYou don't get to be a successful company if your accounting department doesn't blink if there are zeros appearing on invoices.
- jenscow 11y ago"I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks"
- overgryphon 11y agoIt's a little hard to describe Microsoft as a company built on free software. Another thing that gets lost here is that large companies certainly pay full time senior engineers to contribute to open source projects. They just work at the company, not for OpenBSD/RedHat/ect directly.
- hackuser 11y ago> It's a little hard to describe Microsoft as a company built on free software. Ethernet (for utp), Wi-fi, ip, tcp, udp, http, ssl, imap, smtp, dns ... just thinking of networking/Internet tech off the top of my head ...
- Locke1689 11y agoI suppose you're forgetting that one of the most popular Windows releases didn't support Internet connectivity out of the box.